Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloe are a well-known common-law husband and wife team of detective writers from Sweden. Together they conceived and wrote a series of ten novels (police procedurals) about the exploits of detectives from the special homicide commission of the national police in which the character of Martin Beck was the main protagonist. Both authors also wrote novels separately. For the Martin Beck series, they plotted and researched each book together then wrote alternate chapters. The Beck TV-series, based on some of the characters from the Sjowall/Wahlo books but not on the books themselves, revolves around Martin Beck (Peter Haber), Gunvald Larsson (Mikael Persbrandt) and their colleagues at the police force in Stockholm, Sweden. Beck is a divorced, middle-aged man while Larsson is young, forward and quite violent. Together, they make a perfect team, investigating crimes.

A total of 26 90 minute episodes in 4 seasons were made from 1997 to 2009. These were posted on the previous Janna site. The BBC is about to start broadcasting a new season (Five) with a further 4 episodes announced so far. The BBC this week has broadcast the last episode in the fourth season as an introduction to Beck, with the first of the new Season Five episodes due to be broadcast next week followed by three more.

Re-Post of Season Two

S02E01 - The Revenge (Hämndens pris)

Two patrolling cops stumble on to three criminals who have just stolen large amounts of explosives, and are killed in cold blood. Martin Beck and his team must now work day and night to find out who the killers are and what they are planning to do with the explosives before it's too late. Meanwhile, Gunvald Larsson who was a close friend of one of the murdered cops is ignoring all rules in his quest for revenge.

A man is found dead, stabbed to death with a knife. The chocking thing is that his face has been removed. After questioning his wife who described the marriage as happy also told that a mysterious foreign man knocked on their door the day before the murder. Beck and his men are given the case.

An Asian woman is found dead in the water of Stockholm's archipelago. She has been murdered and everything indicates that she was a prostitute. Meanwhile a series of break-ins has occurred on an island outside of Stockholm. Suddenly a retired old man is also found dead in his own yard. Now Beck has two cases to solve and they both point in the same direction.

Martin Beck, Gunvald Larsson and Alice Levander investigate the mysterious murder of an accountant that was found shot to death at the airport parking. At the same time a reporter receives a package from an anonymous source, with information regarding the embezzling of funds that should have been used for fixing up nuclear reactors. When the reporter contacts Beck, his home gets blown up by a bomb

A man is raping women after having met them through ads on public noticeboards. At first this seems like an easy crime to solve for Martin Beck and his colleagues but they soon discover that somebody's motivations are far more complex.